


Rebels and Rule Breakers

by zarrati



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: F/M, post road trip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-28
Updated: 2015-11-28
Packaged: 2018-05-01 14:18:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5209046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zarrati/pseuds/zarrati
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She looks down and nibbles nervously on her bottom lip. It takes every ounce of his self-control to not reach out for her and take that lip between his own teeth.<br/>"Can we–I mean, we should probably talk about this, right?” he asks.<br/>“Yes, definitely,” she nods. “Just–not here, okay.”</p><p>Post-Road Trip</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rebels and Rule Breakers

  
“Uh oh.”

Ben continues to cradle Leslie’s face until he comes to his senses, quickly dropping his hands and stepping away. It was impulsive, and no matter how long he’s been wanting to do that, City Hall in plain view of anyone walking past Chris’ office is not the place to kiss one of your employees. 

Besides, ‘uh oh’ is not the desired response after you kiss someone. But she doesn’t look like she regrets it, does she? And she most definitely kissed him back, so that’s a good sign, right?

He’s openly staring at her now, his mouth moving wordlessly as he tries to come up with something to say, anything to address the enormity of what he just did–of what _they_  just did. 

She’s staring at him, too, almost like she’s waiting for him to finish what he started. 

“Uhm,” he rubs the back of his neck, “I hope I’m not being presumptuous, but that was amazing.”

“I think you crossed the line into presumptuous when you kissed me,” she says back, but there’s a small smile on her lips and a playful twinkle in her eye. “But yeah, that was pretty amazing." 

She looks down and nibbles nervously on her bottom lip. It takes every ounce of his self-control to not reach out for her and take that lip between his own teeth.

"Can we–I mean, we should probably talk about this, right?” he asks.

“Yes, definitely,” she nods. “Just–not here, okay.”

“No, yeah that makes sense. Do you wanna go get dinner or something and talk about…everything?”

She smiles softly. “Yeah, I’d like that. But nowhere in Pawnee. I don’t want to risk anyone seeing us.”

“No, definitely not. Maybe somewhere in Eagleton-”

She makes a face.

“Okay, not Eagleton. I know a great Italian restaurant in Bloomington. Would that work?”

“Yeah. It’s definitely far enough away that we shouldn’t have any problems.”

“And I doubt Chris can physically be within a 2-mile radius of a place serving that many carbs, so we should be safe,” he jokes, and his heart soars when she laughs.

They stand awkwardly for a few moments, neither seeming sure what to do next.

“Well, okay,” Leslie eventually says. “I guess I’ll meet you at the restaurant? It’s probably safer if we take separate cars.”

“Yeah, sure, of course. Uh, yes, I’ll meet you there.”

“Okay,” she agrees and wrings her hands, looking like she’s having some kind of internal debate. She pivots her body towards the door before quickly turning back and pressing a quick kiss to his lips, tossing him a small grin over her shoulder as she leaves.

No matter how hard he tries, he can’t stop smiling the entire drive to Bloomington.

* * *

The restaurant is the perfect mix of casual and romantic, and the two are quickly seated and order wine. There’s a somewhat awkward silence as they peruse the menu, managing to avoid any eye contact until the waiter returns with their drinks.

Ben can feel the nervous tension coming off of her in waves, and he hates it. He wants her to feel relaxed, to feel as at ease with him as she used to be.

After her second large sip of wine, Ben reaches forward and covers her hand with his. 

“Leslie, it’s okay. You don’t have to be nervous. It’s just me. We can talk about whatever you want. You can tell me or ask me anything.”

“How big is it?” she blurts out, and his eyes immediately widen.

She covers her gaping mouth with her hands and blushes furiously. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I just–I’m really bad at first dates and get really nervous. Ask Ann. She can tell you the same thing that one time I pretended to date her. No–I mean she helped me prepare for a first date with someone else before and I–” She put her face in her hands and groans. “Oh, God, I’m making it worse.”

Ben pulls Leslie’s hands away from her face and moves to look her in the eye. “It’s alright, I understand. I’m nervous too, but we don’t have to be. We’ve done this a dozen times before, sitting together, talking and eating, and we were always comfortable around each other. That doesn’t have to change because of whatever this is.” He smirks. “Besides, technically our first date was in Indianapolis and got crashed by Chris, so there’s no way to go but up at this point.”

“That was the worst timing, wasn’t it?” she laughs. “But at least that whole scenario fits perfectly into my track record of first-date disasters.”

Ben takes another sip of wine. “You have no idea what went through my mind when I saw him walk in and join our table.”

“I think I can imagine,” Leslie sighs regretfully. “I was two glasses of wine in and beyond ready to come back to that table and make-out with you, so that was definitely a buzzkill. Here I had spent hours upon hours debating on what to do, and I was finally making a decision to just go for it. As soon as I do, I’m face-to-face with the reason I was so reluctant to begin with. I thought it was a sign or something. That it would be a mistake to do something this risky.”

He swallows and fidgets with the end of the tablecloth. “Do you still think that?”

She doesn’t answer immediately, and with every second of silence, he gets more nervous. His heart is pounding, and he can feel the tiny beads of sweat forming just above his hairline. He doesn’t realize his hands are shaking until he tries to fold them on the table. 

“I honestly don’t know what I think,” she says slowly, and he tenses. “Please don’t think that this means I don’t have feelings for you or don’t want to be with you. I do, I  _really, really_  do, but-”

“But you aren’t sure if it’s worth losing our jobs over.”  

“Right,” she sighs. “I mean, doesn’t that scare you, too? You have just as much to lose as I do.”

“A little,” he shrugs, “but honestly, this isn’t my dream job. I took it because I wanted a change of pace, and…because I wanted to live here.”

“So basically what you’re saying is that it’s my choice?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“Well, no pressure then. Either I choose you and basically say that I don’t care about my career, or I choose my job and break your heart and become a lonely, bitter spinster.”

“None of those things are true, Leslie. If you say no, I’ll understand. I’ll be upset, but not at you, never at you. This is a really sucky situation to be in, and maybe in the future we can do something to make it work. And no one could ever accuse you of not caring about your career, even if we do decide to start dating. Nobody would know anyway if we’re sneaking around.”

“You mean that? You’d be willing to sneak around?”

“Well, yeah. Unless one of us quits, it’s really the only way that this could work. I love the guy, but Chris is pretty oblivious when it comes to things like this, so we should be safe from him if we’re careful. It’s someone finding out and telling him that we’d probably have to worry about. Andy and April are my biggest concern. It’s gonna be hard sneaking out since I live with them.”

“That’s true, but I think we can trust them.”

“Oh, it’s not the trust part,” he agrees. “Andy kind of already knows how I feel about you, anyway. I’m just afraid that he’ll accidentally let it slip or something.”

“Oh, Andy,” Leslie shakes her head. “He means well, but sometimes-”

“I get you, believe me. I live with him, remember?”

The pair share a laugh that’s interrupted by the waiter bringing out their appetizer. 

“I don’t know,” Leslie says as she tears apart a piece of bread, “sneaking around can be kinda sexy.”

“ _Very_  sexy.”

“And I kind of like the fact that you’d be my dirty little secret. Like something out of a movie. We’d meet up at secret, far off places to eat together or see movies. Then sneak back to my place for some hardcore cuddling and making out while we watch the History Channel.”

Ben smiles widely at her enthusiasm. “I can definitely get on board with that.”

She continues to pick apart her bread with a gradually increasing aggressiveness. “But then we’d always be looking over our shoulder to make sure no one is watching us, and we’d have to still work together and try to keep our hands off of each other and grow more and more paranoid that Chris is around every corner just waiting to fire us-”

“Whoa, Leslie, calm down. You’re getting hysterical.”

“I’m not hysterical,  _you’re_ hysterical!" 

He raises his eyebrow and stares down at the mangled bits of bread that litter her plate.

"Ok, so maybe I am freaking out a little. It’s just that every time I think about all of the amazing things that can come out of this, there’s a whole new set of bad ones. I even made a pros and cons list, and it didn’t help at all. It’s always a stalemate. What should we do?”

“Leslie, I know what I want, but I can’t force you to do anything you aren’t ready for. It’ll just add a whole lot of unnecessary pressure on a brand new relationship, and the last thing I want is for you to come into this worrying that it’s a mistake.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Look, you don’t have to decide anything now, okay? That’s not why I asked you to come here with me. We needed to talk, lay everything out on the table so we can choose what’s best for the both of us. Take time if you need it. I’m not going anywhere.”

Leslie nods but doesn’t look any more relaxed. Her eyes are darting back and forth across the restaurant, and her body language resembles that of a caged animal.

“You’re right, you’re right,” she says with a forced calm. “I just need to think about things, and oh, wow, I need to go to the bathroom. So, I’m just gonna head on over to the wiz palace before our dinner gets here.”

“Are you going to call Ann again?”

“Pshhh, what?! That’s crazy talk you’re…talking. I just have to go to the bathroom, and I always take my phone with me so that’s totally normal.”

Ben purses his lips as he watches Leslie practically race to the narrow hallway leading to the bathrooms. His suspicions are confirmed when he sees her talking frantically into her cell phone, her hand moving wildly as she speaks.

The call is shorter than he expects, and she starts walking back to the table. She’s still on the other side of the restaurant when the hostess accidentally runs into her. The two speak briefly, he assumes cordial apologies, until they both look in his direction. 

He unconsciously straightens himself up in his seat at their scrutiny. Leslie smiles kindly at whatever the young woman says to her, but he can tell it isn’t genuine. There’s a sadness there that he can see from across the room.

The hostess eventually walks away, and Leslie catches his gaze. She maintains eye contact the entire walk back to the table, Ben far too mesmerized to break it. The sadness that was once there changed to a look of determination, a look far more familiar to him.

She walks past her chair and stops right in front of him, reaching her hand behind his neck and leaning down for a kiss.

The kiss is much more chaste than the one they shared in Chris’ office, but no less enjoyable. When she finally pulls away, he can only imagine the dazed and confused smile that’s on his face.

“Yes,” she says once she’s back in her seat.

“Yes?”

“My answer is yes, let’s do this. I want to do this.”

He gapes at her and stutters. “Oh-okay, yeah. Let’s-let’s do this. Wow, I guess I owe Ann a huge thank you.”

“I actually couldn’t get a hold of her, so I was just leaving her a very emotional voice mail.”

“Oh, so what-”

“The hostess, actually. I bumped into her on my way back, and after we apologized, she just smiled at me and told me that I was very lucky to have a boyfriend that looked at me the way you do. Under any other circumstance, I’d have just told her that we weren’t together and leave it at that, but…but I didn’t want to correct her. It hit me that she was right.”

She slides her hand across the table and laces their fingers together. “You have done so much for me in the months that you’ve been here, all without expecting anything in return. You’ve had my back, and sometimes, when you look at me, I feel like I can do anything. When she called you my boyfriend, I didn’t realize until then just how much I wanted it to be true. So, yes. Chris’ rule be damned. Let’s do this.”

Every cell in Ben’s body is bursting with energy, and he’s wearing a smile that equally matches Leslie’s. He actually laughs before leaning across the table and pulling her into a searing kiss.

This kiss is anything but chaste. It’s full of passion and joy and more than just a hint of lust. She chose him, and he needs to show her how much that means to him.

“We should–we should get out of here,” she breathes heavily once they manage to pull away. 

“Yes, definitely. I’ll just tell them that we’ll take our food to go, and we’ll eat it later.”

“Good idea. You’re going to be  _very_  hungry tonight. Trust me.”

Ben is sure to give the hostess an extra generous tip when he leaves. 

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on Tumblr @ benwyattforcongress


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